Europe Deserves Much Better than the Lisbon Treaty

Ellie Keen — Fri, 16 May 2008 20:18:25 +0000

European history provides a showcase of human beings at their worst. Constant conflict, the two bloodiest wars ever waged, famine, brutal industrialisation, oppression of workers and women, religious strife, colonialism, fascism, communism – all these stain our past. But Europe also represents the best humankind has accomplished, giving the world the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, a constant struggle for emancipation, democracy and the separation of powers, the welfare state – not to mention universally recognised cultural contributions from Greek drama to Finnegans Wake , from the symphony orchestra to Irish folksong.

Born in the United States and a citizen of France, I am a fervent European. At this point in history, I believe only Europe can provide all its citizens with democratic government, dignified living standards, greater social equality, public services, universal healthcare and education. This small continent, with just 15 per cent of the world’s people, can lead the way towards ecological sanity and a liveable planet and prove nations can overcome even the most tenacious hatreds and live together in peace. Europe can be a counter-model to the myriad brutalities, affinity for war and stupendous inequalities on display elsewhere.

For these and other reasons, I voted no to the deeply flawed, undemocratic European constitution in May 2005. Had the French government not confiscated the people’s right to another referendum, I would have voted no again to the Lisbon (“Reform”) Treaty – a clone of the rejected constitution, except for “cosmetic changes” making it “easier to swallow”, as Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, principal author of the constitution, said. No flag, no Beethoven hymn, but the rest is there as Angela Merkel, José Manuel Barroso, Bertie Ahern and other relieved European notables all agreed.

The treaty contains no substantive changes. It’s just much harder to understand, worse even than the immensely complex constitution. Now we must deal with two European treaties (Rome, 1957, and Maastricht, 1992, with their subsequent revisions) to which Lisbon adds 145 pages of amendments plus 132 more pages of 12 protocols and 51 declarations, all legally binding, all superseding every law of the 27 member states.

There is no single text – you must cut, paste and collate the hundreds of pages for yourself. The very least one should require of a treaty that will dictate at least 80 per cent of all future legislation throughout Europe is that it be comprehensible. But complexity can be an effective weapon against democracy. Let us recall what commission vice-president Gunter Verheugen said after the French and Dutch No votes: “We must not give in to blackmail.” So much for universal suffrage and popular sovereignty.

There are a few beneficial changes to the defunct constitution. The new treaty gives the European Parliament, the only elected body, marginally more power to co-decide on legislation, although it still cannot initiate legislation.

However, the unelected European Commission remains all-powerful, particularly in crucial areas such as trade. A new article specifies the European goal of “integration of all countries into the world economy through the suppression of barriers to international trade”. Already trade commissioner Peter Mandelson is pushing for European corporate penetration in even the poorest countries, defining “barriers” as any government measure regulating foreign investment, public procurement, environmental or consumer protection.

The European Central Bank gets an even more iron-clad statute of independence from political supervision; its mandate remains control of inflation with no mention of full employment. The “market” (63 mentions in the text) remains the supreme good and “competition” (25 mentions) the overarching rule. Public services are specifically subjected to competition: government subsidies or other forms of support will become more precarious. European-wide social policies will require unanimous approval – this is a euphemism for a race to the bottom. The Charter of Fundamental Rights is inferior to most existing European constitutions.

Common security and defence policy places Europe firmly under the tutelage of Nato “which remains the foundation of the collective defence of its members”. We are signing on blindfolded for whatever Nato’s future policies may be – we only know for sure the US will remain in command. The treaty also obliges members to “progressively increase their military capacities”.

This Lisbon Treaty is a model of failed neo-liberal economic nostrums and misplaced confidence in the market and competition as universal panaceas. Europeans deserve better, beginning with an elected convention for drafting a constitution, time for full debate and a popular ratification process.

Europe has now surpassed the US as the wealthiest political entity. We can afford to retain and perfect the European social model, provide a decent livelihood for all and undertake a swift conversion to an ecological economy; we can afford to embody the ideal of the common good. Not to demand all this and more is a betrayal of whatever is best in our history. This may be Europe’s last chance.

Susan George is a Fellow and Chair of the Board of the Transnational Institute. Her latest books are La Pensée enchaînée: Comment les droites laïque et religieuse se sont emparées de l’Amérique [Fayard, 2007], to be published in English as: Hijacking America: How the Religious and Secular Right Changed What Americans Think [Forthcoming, Polity Press 2008], and We the peoples of Europe [Pluto Press, 2008].

The Union Busters

tim — Fri, 16 May 2008 10:14:22 +0000

Union busting is as old as trade unions themselves. Ever since workers started to form their own organisations back in the 18th century to fight for decent working conditions, employers have tried to break them. In the old days workers would be beaten, imprisoned, and sometimes killed for participating in trade union activities. Better working conditions meant less profits for the boss, and a harsh hand was dealt to keep the rich ruling minority firmly in charge.

Nowadays, in developed countries like Britain and the USA, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this kind of oppression towards working people had become a thing of the past. After all, we live in a democracy. But the case studies below show quite the contrary. Although techniques have changed far from becoming a thing of the past, union busting has swelled to become a multi-million dollar industry.

After the 1935 US National Labor Relations Act established the right to join a union and bargain collectively, companies seeking to operate union free could no longer use the bare-knuckle tactics of old. They needed more subtle and sophisticated tactics to fight the trade unions. What they needed were private expert companies that they could hire to do their dirty work for them, companies specialising in union avoidance services. Until the 1970s, however, professional union avoidance consultants were small in number and were not yet part of mainstream industrial relations. Most employers kept quiet about the idea of hiring consultants. One consultant stated that employers “used to sneak to seminars about keeping your plant non-union. They were as nervous as whores in a church! The posture of major company managers was, ‘Let’s not make the union mad at us during their organising drive or they’ll take it out at the bargaining table.”

That mindset changed dramatically in the 1970s and ‘80s, a period of significant expansion for the union avoidance industry, when most employers shed their inhibitions about recruiting union busting consultants. The size of the consultant industry increased tenfold during the 1970s, as employers sought out firms that could help them defeat trade union formation and expansion. Union busting consultants organised thousands of anti-union campaigns, targeting areas of growing importance to unions like healthcare, and white-collar employees. Today, the monopolisation of big business has led to giant companies accumulating enormous profits, and with them, the resource for union busting has grown to unprecedented proportions.

Genesis of Union Busting

The Logan Report, produced earlier this year by the British Trade Union Congress (TUC), reveals some startling statistics. It is estimated that companies in the USA alone are spending a whopping $4 billion each year on union busting! If you take into account that this money is directed mainly at a small number of workers actively engaged in struggle at any one time, that works out at thousands of dollars per worker. Add to that a staggering 25,000 lawyers that are apparently committed to preventing trade unions developing across the USA, and you have what has been described as a genesis for union busting policy.

The Burke Group (TBG), based in California, is one of the worlds’ biggest union busting consultants. It advertises itself as a ‘management consulting firm specialising in union avoidance’. TBG has conducted over 800 union busting campaigns since its establishment in 1981, with clients such as Coca-Cola, Mazda, General Electric, Heinz, DuPont, and Lockheed Martin, with whom they boast a 95% success rate!

The tactic used by union busters like TBG is to get into the workplace and convince the workforce against voting in favour of union representation, or recognition. As trade unions benefit workers’ interests, the only way to achieve this is to lie. Workers are given company leaflets warning that if they join the union they are likely to be permanently on strike. They mislead workers into believing that the union will start harassing them in their homes, risk their job security, and cause them a loss of earnings and benefits. In other words they convince workers into believing exactly the opposite of what trade unions actually offer.

One textbook example of TBG’s union busting campaigns was for the Chinese Daily News (CDN), the largest Chinese language newspaper in North America. In October 2000, 152 mostly Taiwanese workers started a trade union organising campaign after management announced plans to cut pay, and force employees to sign a statement that they could be fired at any time. Within a month, 95 percent of the employees had signed union authorisation cards. In response, CDN hired TBG who immediately started an aggressive anti-union campaign. In March 2001, the workers stood solid and voted again for union recognition. The CDN management told the workers that it was prepared to spend $1 million on defeating the union. True to its word, by September 2005, after an intense five-year anti-union campaign, the union lost a rerun ballot. The head of the Newspapers Guild subsequently described the events as the “fiercest anti-union campaign I have ever been involved in.”

But isn’t this against the law I hear you ask? The simple answer is yes! The trouble is that legislation is so weak that it’s cheaper for the company to pay out damages to individual workers in court, than to give in to the trade unions. In 2007, the US Court of Appeals awarded CDN employees $2.5 million for numerous labour law violations committed by the company, but they will probably never gain union recognition.

Organisations like TBG have been so successful that, despite some 60 million Americans saying that they would like to join a trade union, national membership currently stands at only 7.5 percent of the US private sector workforce.

Bringing It Back Home

And if you thought this kind of thing could never happen here, think again! The Burke Group has been accused of bringing union busting tactics to Britain. In fact, a 2008 survey of trade union organising campaigns in Britain found that employers used anti-union consultants in about one fifth of the cases. TBG has attracted large companies operating here in Britain to its sinister services, including T-Mobile, Amazon.co.uk, Virgin Atlantic, Calor Gas, FlyBe, Cable & Wireless, and Kettle Chips. Many of TBG’s anti-union campaigns have had a devastating impact.

In the case of T-Mobile, George Rankin, an organising officer from the Communication Workers Union (CWU), has described some of the tactics that were used. He said that TBG sent a 7-minute video to the homes of five hundred and fifty T-Mobile workers in order to convince them against voting in favour of recognition of the CWU. TBG used scare tactics like those listed above. Workers were moved away from trade union influence by outsourcing their jobs to private companies. Trade union members were also intimidated and harassed. The union lost the vote for recognition by two to one. It’s a similar story with Cable & Wireless, and with Kettle Chips. The Graphical Print and Media Union involved in the Amazon case stated that “we had never faced this level of serious professional resistance before”, after the union also lost the vote for recognition.

But the FlyBe case is most revealing. In 2006, Europe’s largest regional low-cost carrier hired TBG when 400 cabin crew tried to join the Transport & General Union. However, midway through TBG’s union busting campaign, the union (now called Unite) persuaded FlyBe to drop TBG, and subsequently a huge shift by the workers in favour of union representation led to an election landslide, with 94% of the workers voting in favor of unionisation in an 89% turnout.

Fight Back

What does all this show? It shows that if the workers are left to organise they choose the trade unions. It shows that the only way for companies to avoid trade unions is to lie, to cheat, to manipulate, and to attack. It shows that the argument about capitalist society being governed by the natural forces of market trading is utter nonsense. Capitalist society is, in part, maintained by employers who squander billions of dollars to ensure that the rich stay rich, and the poor stay poor. These battles between trade unions and employers effectively mark out the boundary between the workers, and the business owners in society. It is a boundary between two classes. One side is fighting for decent working and living conditions, and the other side fighting to preserve exploitation and maintain its profits. For one side to gain the other must lose. True we live in a democracy, but it’s a parliamentary democracy, where legislation favours the interests of big business owners, not working people. The enormous resources currently being poured into blocking the unions in the workplace serves to exacerbate this problem. It means the discontent of the exploited workforce is trapped beneath the surface of society and will fester until it can find an avenue of expression.

The two trade union federations in the USA and Britain, the AFL-CIO and the TUC, have signed a joint agreement to work together to eliminate the intimidation of workers who want to improve the quality of their families’ lives by joining or forming a trade union. The two union federations agreed to share information about the activity of union busting firms, to develop a shared database of union busting activity, and create “Busting the Union-Busters” training materials. Both will jointly lobby governments and relevant international bodies to restrict the activities of the union busters. But, the only way to beat union busting once and for all is to unite the workforce, and join and organise in our trade unions, our own class organisations. A collective problem requires a collective solution. Ultimately we must build a new society based on the needs of the majority, not the needs of the rich minority. These are the foundations of a workers’ democracy, of a socialist society.

How to Build a Human Bomb

tim — Fri, 16 May 2008 09:59:14 +0000

When we learnt last week that Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi had blown himself up in Mosul in northern Iraq, the US government presented this as a vindication of its policies. Al-Ajmi was a former inmate of the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. The Pentagon says that his attack on Iraqi soldiers shows both that it was right to have detained him and that it is dangerous ever to release the camp’s prisoners(1). On the contrary, it shows how dangerous it was to put them there in the first place.

Al-Ajmi, according to the Pentagon, was one of at least 30 former Guantanamo detainees who have “taken part in anti-coalition militant activities after leaving US detention”(2). Given that the majority of the inmates appear to have been innocent of such crimes before they were detained, that’s one hell of a recidivism rate. In reality it turns out that “anti-coalition militant activities” include talking to the media about their captivity in Guantanamo Bay. The Pentagon lists the Tipton Three in its catalogue of recidivists, on the grounds that they collaborated with Michael Winterbottom’s film The Road to Guantanamo. But it also names seven former prisoners, aside from Al-Ajmi, who have fought with the Taliban or Chechen rebels, kidnapped foreigners or planted bombs after their release. One of two conclusions can be drawn from this evidence, and neither reflects well on the US government.

The first is that, as the Pentagon claims, these men “successfully lied to US officials, sometimes for over three years.” (3) The US government’s intelligence gathering and questioning were ineffective, and people who would otherwise have been identified as terrorists or resistance fighters were allowed to walk free, despite years of intense and often brutal interrogation. Should this be surprising? Without a presumption of innocence, without charges, representation, trials or due process of any kind, there is no reliable means of determining whether or not a man is guilty. The abuses at Guantanamo Bay not only deny justice to the inmates, they also deny justice to the world.

Al-Ajmi, the authorities say, initially confessed in the prison camp to deserting the Kuwaiti army to join the jihad in Afghanistan(4). He admitted that he fought with Taliban forces against the Northern Alliance. He later retracted this confession, which had been made “under pressure and threats”(5). When the Americans released him from Guantanamo, they handed him over to the Kuwaiti government for trial, but without the admissable evidence required to convict him. Among his defences was that neither he nor his interrogators had signed his supposed testimony(6). The Kuwaiti courts, without reliable evidence to the contrary, found him innocent.

All evidence obtained in Guantanamo Bay, and in the CIA’s other detention centres and secret prisons, is by definition unreliable, because it is extracted with the help of coercion and torture. Torture is notorious for producing false confessions, as people will say anything to make it stop. Both official accounts and the testimonies of former detainees show that a wide range of coercive techniques – devised or approved at the highest levels in Washington – have been used to make inmates tell the questioners what they want to hear.

In his book Torture Team, Philippe Sands describes the treatment of Mohammed al-Qahtani, held in Guantanamo Bay and described by the authorities (like half a dozen other suspects) as “the 20th hijacker”. By the time his interrogators started using “enhanced techniques” to extract information from him, al-Qahtani had been kept in isolation for three months in a cell permanently flooded with light. An official memo shows that he “was talking to non-existent people, reporting hearing voices, [and] crouching in a corner of the cell covered with a sheet for hours on end.”(7) He was sexually abused, exposed to extreme cold and deprived of sleep for a further 54 days of torture and questioning. What useful testimony could be extracted from a man in this state?

The other possibility is that the men who became involved in armed conflict after their release had not in fact been involved in any prior fighting, but were radicalised by their detention. In the video he made before blowing himself up, al-Ajmi maintained that he was motivated by his ill-treatment in Guantanamo Bay. “Twelve thousand kilometers away from Mecca, I realized the reality of the Americans and what those infidels want,” he said(8). He claimed he was beaten, drugged and “used for experiments” and that “the Americans delighted in insulting our prayer and Islam and they insulted the Koran and threw it in dirty places.”(9) Al-Ajmi’s lawyer revealed that his arm had been broken by guards at the camp, who beat him up to stop him from praying(10).

The accounts of people released from Guantanamo Bay describe treatment that would radicalise almost anyone. In his book Five Years of My Life, published a fortnight ago, Murat Kurnaz maintains that one of the guards greeted him on his arrival with these words. “Do you know what the Germans did to the Jews? That’s exactly what we’re going to do with you.” There were certain similarities. “I knew a man from Morocco,” Kurnaz writes, “who used to be a ship captain. He couldn’t move one of his little fingers because of frostbite. The rest of his fingers were all right. They told him they would amputate the little finger. They brought him to the doctor, and when he came back, he had no fingers left. They had amputated everything but his thumbs.” The young man – scarcely more than a boy – in the cage next to Kurnaz’s had just had his legs amputated by American doctors after getting frostbite in a coalition prison in Afghanistan. The stumps were still bleeding and covered in pus. He received no further treatment or new dressings. Every time he tried to hoist himself up to sit on his pot by clinging to the wire, a guard would come and hit his hands with a billy-club. Like every other prisoner, he was routinely beaten by the camp’s Immediate Reaction Force, and taken away to interrogation cells to be beaten up some more(11).

Fathers were clubbed in front of their sons, sons in front of their fathers. The prisoners were repeatedly forced into stress positions, deprived of sleep and threatened with execution. As a senior official at the US Defense Intelligence Agency says, “maybe the guy who goes into Guantanamo was a farmer who got swept along and did very little. He’s going to come out a fully fledged jihadist.”(12)

In reading the histories of Guantanamo Bay, and of the kidnappings, extrajudicial detention and torture the US government (helped by the United Kingdom) has pursued around the world, two things become clear. The first is that these practices do not supplement effective investigation and prosecution; they replace them. Instead of a process which generates evidence, assesses it and uses it to prosecute, the US has deployed a process which generates nonsense and is incapable of separating the guilty from the innocent. The second is that far from protecting innocent lives, this process is likely to deliver further atrocities. Even if you put the ethics of such treatment to one side, it is surely evident that it makes the world more dangerous.

POSTSCRIPT: A few hours after this column went to press, the charges against Mohammed al-Qahtani were dropped, as the evidence extracted from him through torture turned out, unsurprisingly, to be worthless.

References:

1. Josh White, 8th May 2008. Ex-Guantanamo Detainee Joined Iraq Suicide Attack. Washington Post.

2. Department of Defense, 12th July 2007. Former Guantanamo detainees who have returned to the fight. http://www.defenselink.mil/news/d20070712formergtmo.pdf

3. ibid

4. Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants at US Naval Base, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Department of Defense, No date given. Abdallah Salih Ali Al Ajmi: summary of evidence. Pp8-9 of the pdf file.
http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/detainees/csrt_arb/000201-000299.pdf#38

5. Department of Defense, no date given. Summarized Administrative Review Board Detainee Statement. Page 47 of the pdf. http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/detainees/csrt/ARB_Transcript_Set_17_22822-2….

6. No author given, 26th May 2006. 5 ex-Guantanamo detainees freed in Kuwait. Associated Press.

7. Philippe Sands, 2008. Torture Team: Rumsfeld’s Memo and the Betrayal of American Values, extracted in Vanity Fair, May 2008.

8. Quoted by Alissa J. Rubin, 9th May 2008. Bomber’s Final Messages Exhort Fighters Against US. New York Times.

9. ibid.

10. Ben Fox, 7th M ay 2008. Ex-Gitmo prisoner in recent attack. Associated Press.

11. Murat Kurnaz, 2008. Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo. Palgrave Macmillan. Extracted in the Guardian, 23rd April 2008.

12. Quoted by David Rose, 26th February 2006. Using terror to fight terror. The Observer.

Elections Analysis from the Left List

Ellie Keen — Thu, 15 May 2008 23:23:46 +0000

This was a watershed election. For the first time since the New Labour election landslide of 1997 the Tories are in the ascendant. The result of the London Mayoral contest demonstrates that New Labour is now in meltdown.

The reaction of the soft left Compass group around John Cruddas, though doubtless an exaggeration, tells us a deal about the likely reaction among old Labour sections of the movement:

“New Labour is now dead. The strategy that saw the Party continually triangulate interests and concerns, tacking endlessly to the right, doing what the Tories would do only doing it first, fixating on a mythical middle England and denying that free market policies are having a damaging effect on society is now finished.”

Like the late 1970s an exhausted and socially conservative Labour government is presiding over an attack on working class living standards. Unlike the late 1970s the extra-parliamentary and industrial struggle is not on the retreat.

But if we are to exploit this contradiction to strengthen the left and face new challenges from the Tory and fascist right we need to understand clearly what happened to the left in these elections.

The failure of the Livingstone strategy

Livingstone has moved progressively to the right since he first ran as Mayor as an independent eight years ago. He moved right when he rejoined Labour four years ago – and his vote went down. In this election he moved even closer to the Blair-Brown-City axis – and he lost.

Livingstone’s residual left wing reputation meant that his vote was higher than the New Labour vote for the Assembly and his polling figures were higher than the government’s rating but he was too closely associated with New Labour to be able to effectively combat the Tory tide.

Moreover, Livingstone’s own regime in City Hall was part of the problem not part of the solution. Livingstone had no independent base in the labour movement. Indeed when he had the chance to build one out of his independent campaign eight years ago he deliberately refused to do so.

Consequently, the City Hall developed its own version of triangulation – combining left wing statements on racism and the Iraq war (which cost nothing) and City friendly policies on property development, the Olympics and privatisation (where a left wing policy would cost money).

The Livingstone campaign tried to reproduce this approach by constructing a huge cross party bloc stretching all the way from Blair and Brown to the Greens and George Galloway.

This failed in the face of a hard-line Tory candidate who mostly kept quiet and let New Labour’s unpopularity with its own working class supporters do his work.

The Left and Livingstone

Livingtone’s own clientist approach to the ethnic communities in London and the rest of the left reduced the impact of a really independent radical left. The Greens and Galloway claimed to be critical of Livingstone’s neo-liberal economic policy and his loving up to the City, Brown and Blair~but infact have run campaigns that have traded largely uncritical support for Ken in return for his patronage.

This failed for Livingstone, but it also failed for the Greens and Galloway as well.

The Greens got massive publicity in return for calling for a second preference vote for Ken, but their vote stayed the same and they returned the same two GLA members.

Galloway got even less. A sectarian rally held in the middle of the 100,000 Love Music Hate Racism just a mile away at the end of Brick Lane drew less than 200 people to hear Livingstone give a less than explicit plug for Galloway. This was reported in the local press but then repudiated on polling day by local Labour candidate John Biggs.

Other than that the only fruit of this pact was a front organsiation, Operation Bangla Vote, which issued a leaflet with Livingstone and Galloway’s picture on it.

The Left List took a different approach. The Left List argued that while we prefer Labour to the Tories we will not stop defending working people from New Labour’s neo-liberal policies simply because Labour has made itself unpopular with working people. This approach stressed the need to organise independently of New Labour and Livingstone and not to simply to jump on to a sinking ship.

Anyone who remembers the decay of the Labour government in the late 1970s knows how essential it is to create the widest possible left able to organise independently of the pressure to collapse all points of principle in response to the Tory threat.

The Left List vote was disappointing but the campaign did demonstrate a number of important points:

1. The Left List mounted the only genuinely London-wide left wing campaign. We are the only left force that was able to mobilise enough supporters and raise enough money to stand in the Mayoral race, in all the constituencies and on the London wide list.

2. The Left List campaign was the only campaign that has been able through mass leafleting, canvassing, our entry in the Mayoral booklet, and TV and radio broadcasts to put a left argument to millions of Londoners.

3. In a dramatic final full week of campaigning we were the only force able to effectively intervene in the great joint union demonstration on the 24th of April and in the 100,000 strong Love Music Hate Racism carnival.

4. In husting after husting Lindsey German and our other candidates were able to pull the whole debate to the left. Here is how one contribution to the Guardian online discussion put it:

“Whenever Lindsey German’s been invited to speak, she has quickly become a point of reference: At NO2ID hustings she gave Boris a torrid time. At University of London Union hustings Paddick started mimicking her line on Council Housing. At ULU and Stonewall Livingstone has lied about the name of her organisation to create a naughty confusion between her and former friends. At LSE and Goldsmith College other candidates all used the phrase “as Lindsey said….” at least once.”

We’ve made more impact on the press than any other left candidate, including Galloway who lost out because of the strategic decision not to run a Mayoral candidate at the urging of Livingstone supporters in his group. The Left List appeared on BBC London TV news four times, on ITN news, in the Independent, the Guardian, The Times, BBC radio, BBC News 24, Radio 4’s Today programme, The Evening Standard, the Pink Paper, in local papers, local radio stations and in online broadcasts.

5. The Left List candidates are the only really diverse candidate list in the elections. The Greens only had 3 non-white candidates. In contrast to the unfulfilled promise Galloway made to produce a ‘broad list’ it was actually the Left List that had a mix of trade unionist, Afro-Caribbean, Turkish, gay and lesbian, Muslim, Sikh, Jewish, young and old candidates.

The Left Vote

All the left from Livingstone to the Left List were overwhelmed by the massive rejection of New Labour that benefited the Tories and, even more worryingly, the BNP.

The Left List suffered from having a new name. This led to confusion which benefited Galloway. We know that a number of our supporters voted for Respect by mistake. So some of the difference between our 1.3 percent in the Assembly constituencies and the Galloway 2.3 percent on the Assembly list is down to confusion and electoral inertia.

And because voters could vote for the Left List for Mayor, in the constituencies and on the London-wide list the total number of people voting Left List was higher than the total in any one of these categories (ie voters gave us one of three votes).

The Left List Mayoral vote was massively squeezed by the ‘stop Boris’ vote for Ken. But it is worth noting that in 2004 we gained 61,000 first preferences and about the same number of second preferences giving a total of 120,000 first and second preferences. This year the second preferences were much higher than the 16,000 first preferences giving a total of 51,000.

The Left List vote was more evenly distributed across London, while Galloway’s vote was an East London centric vote. Although even here the constituency vote for Hanif Abdulmuhit (the only Galloway constituency candidate) was down slightly from 15 percent to 14.5 percent. And Galloway’s own Assembly list vote fell to 11 percent.

Nationally, the Left List is the only organisation with anything like a countrywide presence and the election results were as good, or nearly as good, as anything the old Respect achieved. In Preston we got 37 percent and missed electing a second councillor by 70 votes. In Sheffield we came second with 25 percent of the vote. In Manchester we won 12 percent and, in a newly contested ward, nearly 10 percent. In Cambridge and Bolton the vote was around 15 percent.

And although Salma Yaqoob’s Sparkbrook ward returned another councillor the vote went down in the neighbouring Sparkhill and Kings Heath wards, both of which would need to see increased votes for her to win the whole parliamentary constituency of which they are a part.

The Left and the decline of New Labour

The crisis will produce two main reactions. New Labour loyalists, not just in the government but in the leadership of unions like UNISON, will argue that we can’t rock the boat and must all stand behind the government or we’ll get the Tories back just as we have done in London. Some of the left will go along or compromise with this view, just as they did with Livingstone (although it will be harder to carry this argument with no left wing banner bearer in Labour). No doubt if we get the Tories back this lot will argue we shouldn’t rock the boat or Labour won’t be re-elected!

The Left List must be part of that grouping on the left, which will contain many Labour party members, who think that fighting neo-liberalism is the best chance of reviving the left’s fortunes irrespective of what the Labour leadership say.

There are some important developments that have been part of the picture of the last few weeks that show that this approach will have an echo. Teachers, lecturers, civil servants, RMT members are very open to this argument~as the united union demonstrations and strikes on 24th April showed.

In London the challenges that a Tory Mayor will throw down to the unions and the left may well provoke struggles on a higher plane than those of recent years – especially as the economic crisis continues to eat into working class living standards.

The LMHR Carnival showed that tens of thousands have already been mobilised against the Nazis – and will be ready to fight a threat that has become even more real in the last week.

Beyond this the anti-war movement remains in strong shape and will need to be deepened as the US presidential race concludes the interregnum in the Washington’s imperial project.

The Left List can become part of this growing opposition to New Labour and play an important part in regrouping the left in the debates that are bound to attend the crisis of the New Labour government.

Olympian Failure

Ellie Keen — Thu, 15 May 2008 23:11:34 +0000

When Ken Livingstone lobbied for the 2012 Olympics he argued that the resulting investment was needed desperately by east London, as it had seen none since Victorian times.

Yet the games have received a chorus of damnation in recent weeks. A study by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) thinktank has shown that the regeneration of the East End of London was wishful thinking, at best.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. New Labour tends to see “regeneration” through the prism of how much profit can be made by business, blindfolded by its belief in the “trickledown” system. The report states that the games will mean that small local businesses will be unable to compete with the multinational stampede into east London, while residents will be priced out of the area. Indeed, the 1992 games in Barcelona displaced tens of thousands of low income families, while the 1998 Seoul games displaced 720,000. China is currently going for gold, with an estimated 1.25 million already displaced from Beijing.

Josh Ryan-Collins, the co-author of the NEF report, said, “The regeneration legacy was not just an enlightened addition to the plan for the games – it was central to the bid.”

We will be paying more than double what Tessa Jowell, minister for the Olympics, first estimated. The original budget was set at £4 billion, £738 million of which was due from the private sector. The new budget stands at £9.325 billion, with predictions for private investment down to just £165 million. The extra cost will be picked up by direct taxation and the National Lottery – 20 percent of the lottery’s total “good cause” budget.

MPs on the Public Accounts Committee last month damned the original budget estimations, saying they “ignored foreseeable major factors” including tax and security. Policing and security costs have risen by £600 million since the original proposals, with the “delivery budget” up from £16 million to £600 million. The bid also omitted a VAT bill of £836 million.

Is it any wonder then, given New Labour’s notoriety for its anti-Midas touch on white elephants ranging from Wembley Stadium to the Millennium Dome, that three quarters of British people don’t think the Olympics will benefit them?

One of the tests for whether London was to host the games was the level of public support. Perhaps that public support would have been less forthcoming had they known the true cost.

Airport expansion is Plane Stupid

Ellie Keen — Thu, 15 May 2008 22:25:58 +0000

Expansion at Heathrow does not only fly in the face of the scientific imperative that we reduce our emissions. It also makes a farce of the democratic process on which we traditionally rely.

On May the 2nd Britain woke up to a very different political landscape. The significant Tory gains told of the shadows to come: shadows which indicate just how dark our future could be. With Boris now mayor, London’s hopes for setting a benchmark to radicalise the Brown government’s environmental policies have faded. No longer have we a mayor who is willing openly to confront the climate-wrecking policies of New Labour.

This is, however, only a small part of the story. A Tory government may do little to alter the business-as-usual trajectory to catastrophic climate change; but Brown is certainly not taking the necessary harsh measures he once purported to advocate. Not only is he doing nothing to reduce UK emissions in line with targets, but he is actively supporting and investing in irresponsible projects that will entail massive emissions growth. At the forefront of these projects is the expansion of Heathrow.

Expansion at Heathrow does not only fly in the face of the scientific imperative that we reduce our emissions. It also makes a farce of the democratic process on which we traditionally rely. The public consultation on adding capacity at Heathrow highlighted the undemocratic nature of the government’s actions. In not allowing dissenting voices within the parameters of the document, it denied the vast democratic majority a voice in choosing the fate of their own city, country and indeed their planet. Instead, what it did, quite clearly, was to highlight the cosy relationship between Brown and big business.

Democracy is failing us. Our representative government is not representing us; we have no voice in the decisions that determine our fate. The aviation industry, already subsidised to the tune of £10 billion annually, is now quite explicitly driving public policy. The locus of power is not with the people, or even their representatives, but with profit and business. The old accusation that it is corporations who take these decisions rings truer as every new policy – whether it be in energy, transport or elsewhere – is announced. So where does this leave us?

Where institutionalised democracy fails, an alternative is needed – an alternative that reminds people what it is to have a voice and to participate in the decision-making processes that shape the outcomes of their lives. Non-violent direct action is a legitimate, if not the only remaining, response to this democratic failure. When the traditional channels of politics are rendered so corrupt, we must look beyond them.

Plane Stupid have made clear that direct action against the aviation industry and their government cronies is vital: both as a means of raising public awareness regarding the dire consequences of airport expansion and the impact of air travel on our battle to stop climate change; and as a method of collective bargaining with which the government must engage. Direct action gives a platform to those disempowered by parliamentary politics – to those that party politics consistently neglects.

This generation of activists are the last generation who can stop climate change. We have seen the failure of traditional forms of protest during the run-up to Iraq. Plane Stupid know – as do so many others, both young and old – that if we are to stop the business-as-usual agenda, that direct action is a means we must use. We also know what it is to participate directly in true democracy: with our horizontal power structures and our consensus decision-making processes, the activist community could certainly give the Brown government a lesson or two in successful democracy.

In 2007, 78% of people said that they would be prepared to change their behaviour to tackle the threat of climate change: given this, we must wonder why, in light of such a clear mandate, the government consistently fails to act.

But it may perhaps be time to leave aside such questions and begin the long course of action necessary to meet today’s challenges. We will try to stop irresponsible political decisions. We will try to reverse them if they are made. But as democracy continues to be left in the gutter it should not surprise anyone that when the time comes, Plane Stupid and many others – both inside and outside party politics – will be there to meet the bulldozers.

If we are to confront the true nature of the climate threat, the government must first scrap its airport expansion plans. The construction of the Third Runway at Heathrow would make meeting even the pathetically inadequate 60% reduction target impossible. Research from the Tyndall Centre shows that with expansion on this business-as-usual trajectory, flight numbers will treble by 2050. This is not going to stop climate change. The public has woken up to this reality: is it not, now, the turn of the government to face the facts?

Torture victim Binyam Mohamed sues British government for evidence

Tim Holmes — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:27:59 +0000

On Tuesday, Binyam Mohamed, a 29-year old British resident in Guantánamo, sued the British government for refusing to produce evidence which, his lawyers contend, would demonstrate that he was tortured for 27 months by or on behalf of US forces in Morocco and Afghanistan, that any “evidence” against him was only obtained through torture, and that the British government and intelligence services knew about his torture and provided personal information about him — unrelated to terrorism — that was used by the Americans’ proxy torturers in Morocco.

They insist, moreover, that his case is an urgent priority, because he is about to be charged before a Military Commission in Guantánamo — the much-criticized system of trials for “terror suspects” that was conceived by the US administration in November 2001 — and they desperately need the exculpatory evidence in the possession of the British government to assist in his defence, and to prove his innocence.

Binyam’s torture

A refugee from Ethiopia, who arrived in the UK in 1994 and was later granted indefinite leave to remain, Binyam Mohamed was working as a cleaner in an Islamic Centre in west London in 2001, and attempting to recover from a drug problem, when he decided to travel to Afghanistan to see what the Taliban regime was like, and, he hoped, to steer clear of drugs because of the Taliban’s reputation as fierce opponents of drug use.

He came to the attention of both the American and British intelligence services in April 2002, when he was seized by the Pakistani authorities as he tried to board a flight to London. Although he had a valid airline ticket, his passport had been stolen, and, rather foolishly, he had borrowed a British friend’s passport instead.

In the heightened tension in Pakistan at the time — just days after Abu Zubaydah, an alleged senior al-Qaeda operative, was captured in Faisalabad — Binyam was immediately regarded with enormous suspicion by the American agents who visited him in the Pakistan prison in which he was held.

Although he later reported to his lawyer — Clive Stafford Smith of the legal action charity Reprieve, which represents 35 prisoners in Guantánamo — that the British checked out his story, and confirmed that he was a “nobody,” the Americans were not convinced, and decided to send him to Morocco, where he could be interrogated by professional torturers who were not bothered about international treaties preventing the use of torture, and who were equally unconcerned about whether evidence of their activities would ever surface.

Speaking of his time in Morocco, where he was held for 18 months, Binyam told Stafford Smith that he was subjected to horrendous torture, which, included, but was not limited to having his penis cut with a razor on a regular basis. In spite of this, the regular beatings and other torture that he did not even want to talk about, Binyam said that his lowest moment of all came when his torturers produced evidence of his life in London, which could only have come from the British intelligence services, and he realized that he had been abandoned and betrayed by his adopted homeland.

After Morocco, Binyam was transferred to Afghanistan, where he endured further torture in the “Dark Prison,” a secret “black site” near Kabul, run by the CIA, which was a grim recreation of a medieval dungeon, but with the addition of non-stop music and noise, blasted into the pitch-dark cells at an ear-piercing volume.

Moved from here to the main US prison at Bagram airbase, where at least two prisoners were murdered by US forces, Binyam was finally put on a plane to Guantánamo in September 2004, two and a half years after his ordeal began.

In Guantánamo, he was put forward for a Military Commission in November 2005, and made one memorable appearance before the military court, when he held up a hand-written placard declaring that the Commissions were in fact “Con-Missions,” but in June 2006 the judge in his case was spared further embarrassment when the entire system was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Revived later that year by a barely sentient Congress, the trials have since struggled to establish their legitimacy, and have yet to proceed beyond arraignment and pre-trial proceedings, with the exception of the case of the Australian David Hicks, who accepted a plea bargain last March in order to return home to serve a desultory nine-month sentence.

In recent months, however, the administration, which boldly states that it intends to try between 60 and 80 of the remaining 273 prisoners, has stepped up the rate at which new prisoners are being charged. In an attempt to save Binyam from a second dose of the Commissions, his lawyers at Reprieve, together with solicitors from Leigh Day & Co., decided that the most constructive and innovative way to secure Binyam’s release was to put pressure on the British government.

The letter to the UK government

Armed with evidence from flight logs, which confirmed that CIA planes had flown from Pakistan to Morocco in July 2002, and from Morocco to Afghanistan in January 2004, as Binyam said they had, and with numerous accounts of British complicity in his interrogations, and knowledge of his rendition to torture, the lawyers submitted a list of requests to David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, at the end of March.

The extensive list of items requested included any evidence relating to UK knowledge of Binyam’s forthcoming rendition while he was held in Pakistan from April to July 2002, including “the identity of the US agents involved, so that they can be traced and interviewed or subpoenaed,” and any evidence relating to Binyam’s claim that representatives of the British intelligence services told him in Pakistan that they knew that he was a “nobody,” which, the lawyers stated, led them to “assume that the UK intelligence services and police have carried out investigations in to Mr. Mohamed’s activities whilst in the UK.” “We believe,” they added, “that such evidence will show that he does not represent a terrorist threat,” and that as such “it forms a necessary part of his defence.”

The lawyers also asked “to interview and take statements from the UK agents who (it is conceded) spoke to Mr. Mohamed whilst he was detained in Pakistan,” and who, Binyam stated, “informed him that he was going to be rendered to an Arab country for torture.” In December 2005, Jack Straw, who was the Foreign Secretary at the time, did indeed admit, in testimony to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, that UK Security Service officers visited Binyam while he was in Pakistani custody, and Binyam’s recollections of that encounter were noted by Clive Stafford Smith during a meeting at Guantánamo:

“They gave me a cup of tea with a lot of sugar in it. I initially only took one. ‘No, you need a lot more. Where you’re going, you need a lot of sugar.’ I didn’t know exactly what he meant by this, but I figured he meant some poor country in Arabia. One of them did tell me I was going to get tortured by the Arabs.”

As Binyam’s lawyers pointed out, “Such evidence will be central to the defence of Mr. Mohamed because any evidence obtained as a result of torture is inadmissible.”

The lawyers also requested “information about Mr. Mohamed’s life in the United Kingdom that could only have come from UK intelligence agencies or other government sources,” which, as Binyam pointed out, caused him particular distress in Morocco, when it was used by his torturers. According to Stafford Smith, this information included “personal details about his life in the UK, such as details of his education, the name of his kick-boxing trainer and his friendships in London, which he had never mentioned during interrogations, and that could only have originated from collusion in the process by the UK security or secret intelligence services.”

In addition, the lawyers requested any evidence about rendition flights that stopped on the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean (which is leased to the United States). After five years of denials, the British government finally admitted in February that two flights had indeed stopped at Diego Garcia, and Binyam’s lawyers requested information about these flights, pointing out that one of the flights had “subsequently stopped in Morocco at the time that Mr. Mohamed was there,” and that it was, therefore, “almost certainly (a) taking another prisoner to Morocco for torture; or (b) taking US personnel there who were involved in Mr. Mohamed’s interrogation process.”

The lawyers also requested any evidence relating to Binyam’s time in the “Dark Prison” in Kabul, where, they noted, “it seems highly probable that the UK government has details of the conditions that prevailed there,” because various British residents — including Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil El-Banna, who returned to the UK from Guantánamo last year — were also held there, and any evidence relating to Binyam’s time in Bagram, where other British prisoners were also held.

The lawyers’ final request was for access to Binyam’s medical records from Guantánamo. They noted that these were “relevant to the question of torture, and Mr. Mohamed’s current physical and mental condition,” and added that, although the Guantánamo authorities have given the UK government access to Binyam’s records, they have refused to provide them to Stafford Smith. “The UK should provide a copy now,” they wrote, “or provide whatever information or documents they have recording the contents of the medical records.”

The lawsuit

The lawsuit filed on Tuesday by Reprieve and Leigh Day & Co. was triggered when lawyers for the government responded to the letter described above by refusing to hand over any of the evidence requested by Binyam’s lawyers, claiming that “the UK is under no obligation under international law to assist foreign courts and tribunals in assuring that torture evidence is not admitted,” and adding, “it is HM Government’s position that … evidence held by the UK government that US and Moroccan authorities engaged in torture or rendition cannot be obtained” by Binyam’s lawyers.

The government lawyers proceeded to claim that Binyam’s lawyers did not “provide any evidence” to support their assertion that “such alleged information or assistance ‘was subsequently used in the torture of [Mr. Mohamed],’” to which Reprieve and Leigh Day responded by pointing out that Binyam’s allegation that UK sources provided information to his torturers in Morocco was “found credible” by the Intelligence and Security Committee (IRC), a committee established in the UK Intelligence Services Act 1994, and empowered to examine the expenditure, administration and policies of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ. Binyam’s lawyers pointed out that the government had ignored the conclusion of the IRC’s Rendition Report in 2007, when the committee had explicitly stated, “There is a reasonable probability that intelligence passed to the Americans was used in [Binyam Mohamed]’s subsequent [Moroccan] interrogation.”

They also cited the particular passage from Binyam’s statement to Clive Stafford Smith, in which he spoke about the interrogation in Morocco that contained information that could only have come from the British intelligence services:

“Today I was questioned about my links with Britain. The interrogator told me, ‘We have been working with the British, and we have photos of people given to us by MI5. Do you know these?’ I realized that the British were sending questions to the Moroccans. I was at first surprised that the Brits were siding with the Americans. I sought asylum in Britain rather than America because it’s known as the one country that has laws that it follows. To say that I was disappointed at this moment would be an understatement.”

It remains to be seen, of course, if this novel approach taken by Binyam’s lawyers will bear fruit, but it seems plausible, as it is hardly in the interests of the British government to run the risk of further embarrassing disclosures. The lawsuit may, therefore, put pressure on the politicians to step up their efforts to secure Binyam’s return to Britain — to face charges in the UK, if any can be found that will stick to the “nobody” from west London — rather than to allow him to be tried in a much-criticized system in Guantánamo that threatens to embarrass both the British and the American governments.

Andy is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison.

Britain’s rich get richer even as recession begins to bite

tim — Wed, 14 May 2008 23:24:01 +0000

The choice of headline to mark 20th aniversary of the Sunday Times Rich List will hardly have given the newspaper’s editor sleepness nights: “Rich Get Richer under New Labour.” The same headline would suffice for each of the past 10 years.

But this time the uninterupted growth of wealth amongst the already super-rich takes place amidst a period of extreme economic turbulence, during which the living standards of working people have fallen sharply. As Sunday Times journalist Philip Beresford’s opening gambit illustrates: “Even as the storm clouds gather, Britiain’s super-rich have never been richer.”

Not only are the super-rich utterly impervious to the extortionate recent rises in the cost of living, but their wealth grows whether economic conditions are favourable or not. While house prices in the UK have begun to fall, reports in the media detail how the rarified West London housing market of the international super-rich is insulated from such downward pressures and continues to climb—albeit at a slightly slower rate.

The accumulated wealth of those on the rich list has grown to £412.8 billion, an increase of almost £53 billion from last year. Growth has fallen by more than a quarter, from last year’s rate of 20 percent, to 14.7 percent. Of this year’s top 10, only three were born in Britain. Indian-born number one Lakshmi Mittal’s wealth grew by an astonishing 44 percent, mainly by virtue of swallowing up more international steel producing facilities through mergers. Such business manoevres usually result in consolidation and redundency notices for staff who find their jobs duplicated.

In his new book on international elites David Rothkopf observes, “The rise of nation states produced national ruling classes. It would be odd if the current integration of the world economy did not produce new global elites—business people and financiers who run global companies.”

Writing in his Observer column about Rothkopf’s new publication, Will Hutton noted how Prime Minister Gordon Brown has surrounded himself with former employees of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Jonathan Powell, former premier Tony Blair’s chief of staff, has joined Morgan Stanley and Blair himself receives a large stipend from Goldman Sachs.

The Sunday Times then addresses itself to the relatively tragic fate of British-based billionaires. Whilst the international super-rich are, in the words of the Sunday Times, “getting richer quicker,” by contrast British-born billionaires with substantial UK investments suffered from the economic slowdown far more than their international counterparts. Falls were expected in fortunes reliant upon British retail, property and investment. British-born Sir Philip Green, who owns BHS and TopShop, saw his wealth decline by 10 percent—losing £570 million in one year. Richard Branson lost £400 million off a previous £2.7 billion due in no small measure to the drop in Virgin Media’s share value. Vincent Tchenguiz, a British investor and property dealer, suffered a 76 percent fall in his wealth.

Rupert Murdoch’s flagship newspaper complains (in what will be seen as a warning by the Brown government) that “whereas we used to lead the field with the near-20 percent growth rates, our 14.7 percent increase this year seems positvely pedestrian.” Rich list lead writer Beresford points to contemporary increase of 22.6 percent in the wealth of the world’s super-rich and of a staggering 26.6 percent increase amongst Europe’s super-rich over the last year.

Beresford then complains about the new single payment of £30,000 annual tax levied on those deemed to be non-domicile (not resident) in Britain—irrespective of their actual wealth—despite this being little more than loose change for those on its list. The UK’s non-domicile rule in fact still allows the international super-rich to make London their home without paying taxes on earnings from abroad. And they pay very little or nothing on their British-based profits.

But Beresford is worried about bigger things to come. He notes that the storm clouds are gathering and worries that the super-rich have become a “convenient target,” writing, “In times of economic uncertainty, the gulf between rich and poor is rarely ignored by those looking for a convenient scapegoat.” By way of defence, the Sunday Times hails the money donated by a few of the super-rich to charity.

The degree of wealth disparity in the UK is astounding and Beresford is not the only commentator to note the increasing hostility towards the super-rich. A couple of days after the publication of the list, Dominic Lawson opened his weekly column in the Independent newspaper by stating, “If there is a bloody Bolshevik revolution in this country, I think I can guess the inflamatory pamphlet which will be waved by the people putting the wealthy up against the walls and shooting them. It will not be the Communist Manifesto. It will be the Sunday Times Rich List.”

Though decrying what he described as the “politics of envy,” Lawson states that “The 2008 edition, published just a couple of days ago, was more eye poppingly voyeuristic than ever: 110 pages of non-stop salivation over fortunes which the rest of us could only dream about.”

He then notes that the Archbishop of Cantebury, Rowan Williams, was interviewed only days prior to the rich list publication, telling BBC interviewer John Humphreys, “The more you have a disproportion between what people are earning and what they are worth, the more we have astronomical sums with no clear rationale behind them, the less credibility the whole thing has.”

Williams added that the enormous disparities between the super-rich and ordinary working people brings about “a degree of envy and cynicism … that leads people to feel alienated from the rest of society.”

Lawson’s derision is not directed against inequality, but at those like Williams who presume to draw attention to the elephant in the room. The Archbishop’s sin is to make the obvious connection between the gargantuan wealth accumulated at the one pole of society with the increasing immiseration and insecurity at the other. Willliams, writes Lawson, “is one of those who believes that over the past decade under New Labour the least well off have got poorer as the rich got richer, and that the latter fact is in some way responsible for the former.”

Lawson spends the rest of his column arguing that inequality, regardless of repeated academic research findings, is not really growing. And besides, he pleads, any attempt to redistribute wealth through taxation is self-defeating.

But such statements—the mantra of Thatcher, Blair and Brown—ring increasingly hollow. In the UK millions of working people live a life of perpetual financial insecurity and crippling debts. They suffer the daily ignonimy of waiting nervously for the latest bank or mortgage statement, or looking on as petrol gauges and pay-as-you go utility meters tick over. Newpapers, even the upmarket broadsheets, are full of advice for readers about how to tighten their belts, how to reduce debt and avoid bankruptcy or how to save money on household shopping and utility bills.

While house prices rose and credit was readily available, the Labour government and a supportive media was able to dazzle sufficicent numbers of people with the illusion of rising living standards. No longer. Gordon Brown has constructed an economy built on unsustainable levels of debt. Not for nothing did Guardian economics editor Larry Elliott call his book on Blair and Brown’s economic policies Fantasy Island. That some commentators are now worried by the vulgar worshiping of money represented by the Sunday Times Rich List is out of fear of the social and political struggles that will inevitably be provoked by the onset of recession.

The Iran risk, again

tim — Wed, 14 May 2008 23:12:02 +0000

The risk of a conflict between the United States and Iran is, unexpectedly and in a new context, acquiring fresh force. True, the current scenario has elements of the familiar – the recent deployment of two US carrier-battle groups in the Gulf, a pointed reminder to the Tehran government of the extent of Washington’s naval power; and a continuation of arguments over Iranian nuclear ambitions, including inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the imposition of a third layer of sanctions by the United Nations Security Council. What makes the latest phase of tension between Washington and Tehran different, however, is the influence on US calculations of its predicament in Iraq and Afghanistan – and, in particular, of the upsurge in violence in March-April 2008 in Basra and Baghdad.

Several columns in this series have discussed the possibility of a US-Iran confrontation being sparked by a minor incident, possibly a provocation by either side or by Israel (see “Israel, the United States and Iran: the tipping-point” [13 March 2008]). Such fears seemed to recede with the publication on 3 December 2007 of the US’s national-intelligence estimate NIE) – Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities [1] – which gave a more cautious assessment of the state of Iran’s nuclear expertise and ambitions. The widespread conclusion was that the report made US military action against Iran less likely, though the potential for provocation or unintended escalations clearly remained.

Now, however, the systematic planning for US air-strikes that was prominently discussed is again on the agenda – and the target this time is not Iran’s nuclear facilities, but Pasdaran-e Inqilab (Revolutionary Guard [2]) forces that are accused of supporting insurgents in Iraq (see Michael Smith, “United States is Drawing Up Plans To Strike on Iranian Insurgency Camp [3]”, Sunday Times, 4 May 2008).

What has brought the United States political and military leadership back [3] to this point, as in another part of its universe the presidential-election race consumes so much of the media’s attention?

The cost of failure

The answer begins with the apparent success of the US military “surge” in Iraq, announced by George W Bush in the wake of his rejection of the Iraq Study Group report of December 2006. The surge, entailing the phased deployment of additional contingents of American troops over the period February-July 2007, had (in combination with other factors and measures) some effect in reducing insecurity in certain parts of Iraq. This was generalised by a number of analysts and commentators into an argument that the entire dynamics of the conflict in Iraq were being reshaped in favour of peace and security (to be followed, it was hoped, by an internal political settlement).

This evolving argument was always open to challenge on the basis of a closer inspection of what was happening on the ground in Iraq – and the assessments of senior US officials in the country tended in any case always to be more cautious than the surge’s neo-conservative cheerleaders at home. But the events of spring 2008 is making the case for progress in Iraq look ever more threadbare.

The attempt by forces loyal to the Nouri al-Maliki government to take control of the port city of Basra had a drastic effect in this regard. The Saulat al-Fursan (Operation Knights Charge) campaign of 25-31 March 2008, backed by US forces, was designed to oust the Mahdi army militias around the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. A period of intense fighting largely failed to secure this objective, and in turn provoked armed combat in Baghdad too; these included repeated attacks on the highly fortified “green zone”, many of them originating from the fringes of the Shi’a stronghold of Sadr City. In response, US and Iraqi government forces have been engaged in sustained assaults on parts of Sadr City in a major operation that began in the third week of April 2008 and is still unfinished.

These assaults have involved the use by US forces of air-strikes, helicopter gunships and even surface-to-surface missiles in efforts to force supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr to retreat from the areas they control that are closest to the green zone. Hundreds of Iraqis, many of them civilians, have been killed; many more have been forced to flee [6] the area.

As a result of these and other operations, the US military death-toll [6]in Iraq has also been rising. The number of soldiers killed in February-April 2008 was greater than for equivalent period since mid-2007, and much higher than in the period when the surge seemed to be having its greatest effect.

The Mahdi army militias that support Muqtada al-Sadr have mounted strong resistance to the combined US-Iraqi government assault; the sandstorms of 3-4 May in Baghdad provided them with the cover needed to launch further mortar-attacks on the green zone. To complicate matters worse for the US, Sunni militias have also been active. A double suicide-bombing near Baghdad on 1 May killed thirty people and injured sixty-five; and Sunni insurgents killed ten Iraqi soldiers on 5 May (Sholnn Freeman, “10 Iraqi Soldiers Die in Drive-By Attack [7]”, Washington Post, 6 May 2008).

More broadly, US military sources cite recent evidence that the al-Qaida movement in Iraq is undergoing a revival following its reversals of late 2007; they conclude that it is planning a new series of bomb-attacks, especially in Baghdad (see Liz Sly, “Al Qaeda Revival in Iraq Feared [8]”, Chicago Tribune, 20 April 2008). This compounds the problems for a US military already facing combat with a freshly active network of Sadrist militias and with renewed operations by Sunni insurgents.

This is a delicate situation for the US, and some distance from the fleeting optimism of the postsurge period. It means that there is now very little likelihood that the Pentagon will be able to withdraw any further troops from Iraq after summer 2008, by when the surge’s full effects will have been allowed to run their course. This is a severe problem for an overstretched US military, since such withdrawals are seen as a prerequisite of sending reinforcements to Afghanistan to fight a resurgent Taliban (see “No US Troop Increase in Afghanistan Without Deeper Cuts in Iraq: Pentagon [9]”, AFP, 7 May 2008).

Indeed, Afghanistan itself continues to present great difficulties for the US and its Nato allies in the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf). The attempted [10] assassination of Hamid Karzai in the heart of Kabul on 27 April – the fourth such attempt on the life of the Afghan president – reflects the change of Taliban strategy towards a different style of asymmetrical warfare (see “Afghanistan’s Vietnam portent [10]”, 17 April 2008). This incident was followed on 29 April by a suicide-bombing in Jalalabad, to the east of the capital, aimed [11] at an opiumeradication team; it killed nineteen people and injured dozens more.

In response to a range of challenges in Afghanistan – including the proliferating opium-poppy crop, now being harvested by farmers in many of the Taliban-controlled districts – many Nato contingents are constrained by national rules of engagement. As a result, Washington is exerting strong pressure for US military forces to take over the leadership of Isaf across the south of the country (see Gordon Lubold, “U.S. To Heighten Afghan Role? [12]”, Christian Science Monitor, 25 April 2008).

The Pentagon thus has a clear idea of the necessity of its taking charge in Afghanistan. But from the US’s own perspective, little progress there will be possible unless it can reinforce its troops there. There may now be around 61,000 coalition forces in Afghanistan, the majority of them American, which represents a significant expansion since autumn 2006; but even this has failed to halt or reverse the Taliban’s spreading influence.

For a George W Bush administration in its last months in office, surveying a bleak international landscape in which the grand ambitions of the “war on terror” are very far from achieved, the accumulated result of this unsettlement and pressure is intense frustration that it is not in control. The vaunted success of the surge in Iraq is being reversed; the security situation in Afghanistan is deterioriating; and both trends are happening just as the presidential-election campaign is approaching top gear.

The signs of war

This, by a roundabout but remorseless route, is the heart of the answer to the “why Iran again, and why Iran now?” question. The default American establishment position when faced with problems in Iraq is often in any case to blame Iran. The pattern has been repeated in the past week, with a litany of complaints that Iran is involved in supporting the Shi’a militias.

Iran undoubtedly does provide backing to some of the militias. But it is equally notable that Muqtada al-Sadr and the Mahdi army have tended to distance themselves from Tehran, and that the Nouri al-Maliki government itself maintains strong political links – reflected in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad [13]‘s visit to (and warm welcome [14] in) Baghdad in March 2008. Moreover, the Iraqi government is cautious about making strong claims for the closeness of the Iran connection (see Leila Fadel & Shashank Bengali, “Iraq Backs Off Allegations that Iran is Behind Violence [15]”, McClatchy Newspapers, 4 May 2008).

Washington, however, often seems impervious to such important complexities (see Patrick Cockburn, “Who is Iraq’s ‘Firebrand Cleric’? [16]”, Mother Jones, 31 March 2008). So there have been repeated allegations that Iran is fomenting conflict in Iraq, extending now to reports that Hizbollah instructors are training Iraqi insurgents (see Michael R Gordon, “Hezbollah Trains Iraqis in Iran, Officials Say [17]”, New York Times, 5 May 2008).

The Iranians have reacted by withdrawing from discussions with the Americans on security in Iraq. This is at the very time when the chair of the US joint chiefs-of-staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, has gone on record that military options are being considered because of Tehran’s “increasingly lethal and malign influence” in Iraq (see Ann Scott Tyson, “U.S. Weighing Readiness for Military Action Against Iran [18]”, Washington Post, 26 April 2008).

These developments do not make a conflict with Iran inevitable. They do, however, suggest that “something” is being considered. The most likely action might be some kind of “demonstration” air-strike against a Revolutionary Guard base close to the Iraqi border. This need not be imminent; it might well be deliberately timed for late summer.

A US decision to launch such a high-profile, symbolic and calculated attack would also explode into the middle of the campaign for the presidency. The more likely beneficiary would be John McCain rather than his Democratic challenger, since any escalation of tensions with Iran tends to mobilise public and media sentiment behind the Republican, establishment and military currents in American politics.

A military confrontation with Iran, however limited in Washington’s design, will have incalculable consequences in the region (see “America and Iran: the spark of war [18]”, 20 September 2007). Iran – as earlier columns in this series have suggested – is an agent in this overall situation, and will respond in accordance with its own perceived interests by using the range of possibilities at its command (see “The United States and Iran: the logic of war [18]”, 1 February 2007). The attack will also reinforce the position of Iran’s hardliners.

In January 2009, the new US president will be obliged to pick up the pieces of a complex conflict that American action against Iran will have exacerbated But the desired domestic political effect will be secured, in the prolongation of Republican control of the White House. And the “long war” will have entered a new and even more dangerous phase.

Links:

[1] http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/reports/2007/nie_iran-nucle…
[2] http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iran/pasdaran.htm
[3] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3868063.e…
[4] http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/paulrogers.htm
[5] http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745641966
[6] http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/05/08/iraq.main/
[7] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/05/AR200805…
[8] http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-iraq-qaeda_slyapr20,1…
[9] http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080506/pl_afp/usafghanistanmilitary_080506…
[10] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article3828536.ece
[11] http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-04-29-voa66.cfm
[12] http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0425/p01s03-wosc.html
[13] http://www.president.ir/eng/
[14] http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/03/africa/iran.php
[15] http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/35794.html
[16] http://www.motherjones.com/interview/2008/03/who-is-iraqs-firebrand-cler…
[17] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/05/world/middleeast/05iran.html
[18] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/04/25/ST20080425…

Behind the BBC's Good News from Basra

Ellie Keen — Wed, 14 May 2008 21:43:35 +0000

The Today programme’s reporting of the assault on Basra and Baghdad’s Sadr City by the Iraqi government, backed by US and British troops, tanks and warplanes, has descended to the base assertion that our side is good, their side is bad.

Evan Davis, Today’s new presenter, introduced a section on Basra on May 2 which opened with an resident of Basra describing Moqtada Sadr’s Mahdi Army as “very ill-educated, basically criminals” and welcoming the renewed invasion by western forces. Davis then turned to Major General Barney White-Spunner, the UK’s senior officer in Iraq: “So it sounds like fairly good news from Basra?”

“That’s certainly our view,” White-Spunner replied. Davis pressed for more good news: “Are the gains sustainable, I suppose is the question isn’t it? Or do you think if you don’t get to mend the sewers very well people are going to become discontented again and we’ll start getting back to more street disorder?”

White-Spunner took his cue and talked unchallenged about the “excellent work” UK troops were doing, about “development”, “aid distribution”, “humanitarian work”, “sensitivity” to local needs and so on. The interview was almost as cosy as editorial meetings of The Field magazine or Baily’s Hunting Directory, where White-Spunner works when not occupying foreign lands.

Meanwhile, Iraqi government troops were parading the bodies of dead Mahdi fighters like trophies and beating up prisoners. On the same day as White-Spunner’s Radio 4 interview a huge crowd of Shia Muslims protested against Iraq’s US-backed prime minister al-Maliki in Baghdad’s Sadr City, urging him to end the bloody confrontation with the Mahdi Army.

The British media routinely portrays supporters of Moqtada Sadr as “militia”, “extremists”, “men in black”, “rogue gunmen” and “death squads”. Yet, up until last September, Moqtada Sadr’s group was part of the Iraqi government. The US offensive has relied heavily on the Iran-backed Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, many members of the armed wing of which, the Badr Organisation, have been battling the Sadr-led resistance.

The US demonises the Mahdi Army because Sadr is resolutely opposed to the occupation. Moreover, many Shia view the Mahdi in part as a charitable organisation and are often grateful for the security it provides. Sadr’s organisation gives money to families of Shia dead and injured, resettles displaced families and offers funds for any victim of American weapons in Sadr City. Evoking comparisons with Hezbollah, Sadr’s movement “has established itself as the main service provider in the country,” says a recent report by Refugees International. Every month the Mahdi army distributes rations of rice, cooking oil, sugar, tea and other staples, much of it provided by the Iraqi Red Crescent, to thousands of Baghdad’s poorest families.

As the Financial Times put it last month, the clashes between the government and the Mahdi army reveal a class division at the heart of the Shia community. Sadr represents the angry, dispossessed Shia masses of Iraq who suffered under Saddam. “What we’ve seen over the past few weeks is a real class struggle open up with no political means for bridging the gap,” the International Crisis Group told the FT. “Sadr’s followers don’t care if he’s an ayatollah or not. They just want him to win for them the wealth and prosperity they feel should be theirs,” a US official told the paper.

The British media’s last line of attack is that British troops are defending women’s rights. But abuse of women was widespread in Basra before the British were driven out of the city last autumn. The US-backed government has brought right-wing Islamists to power, unleashing attacks against women.

The resistance in battling the occupation. But for the BBC’s flagship news programme our boys are just doing good, building sewers and helping reconstruction. This is far from the case – the British and US armies are building a sewer of bloodshed and sectarian hatred in Iraq.

The Guardian Covers (Up) Colombia’s Reality

tim — Wed, 14 May 2008 19:44:14 +0000

Colombia received more detailed attention than usual from the daily Guardian of the UK during the months of March and April of this year for many reasons:

1) On March 1 Colombia’s military violated Ecuadorian sovereignty to kill Raul Reyes, a leftist (FARC) guerrilla leader, and thereby provoked a regional crisis.
2) In mid March a minor scandal erupted due to UK Foreign Minister Kim Howells’ aggressive support for UK arms exports to Colombia
3) Rumors were reported in late March that a high profile hostage of the FARC rebels, Ingrid Betancourt, was gravely ill.
4) Mark Penn resigned on April 6 from Hillary Clinton’s campaign because of his lobbying work on behalf of Colombia in support of a trade agreement with the US.

During these two months the Guardian published 38 articles that discussed Colombia in significant detail. It is a very revealing exercise to scan these articles for information that is readily available on the website of Human Rights Watch (HRW). 

HRW is a prominent organization with a track record of being disproportionately hard on US enemies (Hizbullah, Hamas, Venezuela) and soft on the US allies (Israel, Haiti under Gerard Latortue). [1] It is not a group likely to exaggerate the crimes of a US and UK ally.

One might expect that a supposedly left leaning newspaper like the Guardian would, at the very least, tell readers what HRW has been reporting.

In February of 2008, in an article for the Progressive magazine, two senior HRW officials wrote:

“For years, the Bush administration in the United States has stood by the government of President Álvaro Uribe in Colombia unconditionally, turning a blind eye to Colombia’s serious human rights problems. The Blair government in the UK, for the most part, quietly followed suit, providing substantial assistance to Colombia’s military with no strings attached. Colombia presents one of the worst human rights records in the world. At nearly three million, Colombia’s population of internally displaced persons is second only to that of Sudan.”[2]

In the 38 articles examined, not a single word (out of roughly 25,000) appeared about Colombia’s internally displaced people. No doubt, unconditional support for Colombia is easier to maintain when the magnitude of its human rights disaster is completely hidden by the Liberal media, but the Guardian did not just bury the scale of the crimes. It kept the leading perpetrators mostly out of sight.

HRW’s summary reports about Colombia from 1989-2002 frequently pointed out that the vast majority of political murders have been perpetrated by the military and rightwing paramilitary groups that operate with the tolerance and even direct support of the military. In 2002, HRW reported that the largest paramilitary death squad (AUC) was responsible for 50% of political killings compared to 8% for the FARC, the largest of the leftist rebel groups.[3]

In more recent years, HRW has shied away from identifying the leading perpetrators of political murders. Instead it has reported qualitative conclusions regarding a limited subset of crimes. For example, it has reported that leftist rebels are responsible for most recruitment of child soldiers while paramilitaries are usually responsible for murdering trade unionists.[4]

However, according to the Jesuit-run Center for Research and Popular Education (CINEP), whom HRW has cited in past reports, as of 2006 the majority of human rights abuses continued to be perpetrated by the Colombian military and the paramilitaries. [5]

HRW’s recent reports give no reason to doubt CINEP’s conclusions. In 2005 HRW produced an extensive report exposing the fraudulence of the Colombian government’s “demobilization” of the paramilitaries. The report, entitled “Smoke and Mirrors: Colombia’s demobilization of paramilitary groups” summarized the situation of the paramilitaries as follows:

“Colombia’s right-wing paramilitary groups are immeasurably powerful. Through drug trafficking and other illegal businesses, they have amassed enormous wealth. They have taken over vast expanses of the country’s territory to use for coca cultivation or as strategic corridors through which they can move drugs and weapons. In recent years, they have succeeded in expelling left-wing guerrillas and strengthening their own control of many parts of the country. And thanks to this power, they now exert a very high degree of political influence, both locally and nationally…..paramilitaries have historically enjoyed the collaboration, support, and toleration of units of the Colombian security forces, a fact that has led many to refer to the paramilitaries as a ‘sixth division’ of the army. Today, paramilitaries have made major gains in consolidating this impunity, along with their economic and political power, with the collusion of the Colombian government.” [6]

To what extent did the Guardian convey any of this during the months of increased attention on Colombia?

In the 38 Guardian articles the word “FARC” appears 135 times; only 17 times do the words “paramilitary” or “paramilitaries” appear. There were 13 articles that mentioned Colombia’s baseless allegations of Venezuelan collaboration with the FARC [7] – only five articles that mentioned the well documented collaboration between the Colombian government and the paramilitaries. But even these lopsided numbers understate the extent to which the Guardian covered up Colombia’s human rights record.

On March 26, HRW, along with 22 other international human rights organizations that included Amnesty International, signed an open letter to Colombian President Alvaro Uribe after four unionists were murdered who were involved with protests against paramilitary violence that took place on March 6. Many other protest organizers were attacked and received death threats. The open letter stated:

“Shortly before the attacks, presidential adviser José Obdulio Gaviria made a series of statements on national radio linking renowned victims’ representative Ivan Cepeda and other organizers of the March 6 protest to the notoriously abusive guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). On February 11, one day after Gaviria first made the statements, the supposedly demobilized United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) paramilitary group released a statement echoing Gaviria’s allegations.” [8]

The letter called on Uribe to denounce the baseless allegations and break the links between the paramilitaries and his government. Neither the open letter nor the March 6 protests were reported by the Guardian.

It is worth looking closely at one of the five Guardian articles that did actually mention collaboration between the government and rightwing paramilitaries. The article, “Colombia’s ‘parapolitics’ scandal casts shadow over president”, by Sibylla Brodzinsky was published April 23. Brodzinsky wrote:

“Mario Uribe was the latest in a string of more than 30 politicians elected to Congress in 2006 who have been arrested on charges related to conspiracy with the paramilitary death squads that controlled huge swathes of the nation before they began demobilizing in 2003.”

This neglects to mention that most of the politicians are from Uribe’s coalition and that the paramilitary power has been left untouched by the “demobilization”. A week before Brodzinsky’s article appeared HRW had reported:

“Nearly all the 30,000 ‘demobilized’ paramilitaries are free and have never been investigated” and that “scores of ‘new’ groups closely linked to the paramilitaries are operating all over the country, engaging in extortion, killings, forced displacement, and drug trafficking. “ [9]

Brodzinsky also wrote:

“President Uribe has said that it is thanks to his policies that Colombia has been able to go through the collective catharsis.”

This argument stood unchallenged even though HRW had recently provided a strong counter argument:

“....these investigations are the result of an initiative by the Colombian Supreme Court – not the Uribe Administration. While Uribe has funded the court, he has often taken steps that could undermine the investigations, lashing out against Supreme Court Justices and even, at one point, floating a proposal to let the politicians avoid prison.” [10]

Brodzinsky then made the following outlandish claim:

“Despite repeated journalistic and judicial investigations into alleged links between the president and paramilitary groups, no evidence has ever come forth.”

There is, of course, overwhelming evidence of very strong links between the Colombian government (which has been run by Uribe for several years) and the paramilitaries. Some of the evidence is even reported in Brodzinsky’s article. The Guardian appears to employ an unique definition of the word “evidence” for politicians supported by Washington.

Brodzinsky’s article also cited Urine’s 84% approval rating, but failed to convey the risks that journalists, activists and politicians take with their lives if they challenge Uribe. It would be wrong to deny that Uribe has significant popular support, but it would also be wrong to deny that his government makes eroding that support through peaceful means is a very dangerous task.

Moreover, there is good reason to believe Urine’s approval rating exaggerates his level of support. In presidential elections Uribe has captured the vote of roughly 25 percent of the eligible voters. In 2003, Uribe campaigned very aggressively for the passage of a “yes” vote on a referendum that made fifteen sweeping proposals. He failed to convince 25 percent of the electorate to turn out for it – the minimum turnout required for it to pass – despite having a 75 percent approval rating at the time.[11]

The Guardian’s coverage of Colombia explains why UK Foreign Minister Kim Howells dared to be photographed with Colombian soldiers (in fact, with a unit accused of murdering trade unionists), and why Howells had the audacity to lash out maliciously at Justice For Colombia, a UK based solidarity group. [12] If newspapers like the Guardian do not even report much of what establishment friendly groups like HRW have to say then it should come as no surprise that backing Colombia’s worst criminals comes with negligible consequences.

SUGGESTED ACTION

Write to the Guardian readers editor Siobhain Butterworth
reader@guardian.co.uk
Siobhain.Butterworth@guardian.co.uk

Write to Guardian Journalists Sibylla Brodzinsky and Rory Carroll (Latin America Correspondent)
sibylla.brodzinsky@guardian.co.uk
rory.carroll@guardian.co.uk

NOTES

[1] http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/emersberger240208.html
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/4131
http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mwherold/Herman_Peterson_Szmaely2007.pdf
http://www.counterpunch.org/cook09252006.html
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=705

[2] http://hrw.org/english/docs/2008/02/01/colomb17975.htm

[3] http://www.hrw.org/doc?t=americas&c=colomb&document_limit=120,20

[4] http://hrw.org/englishwr2k7/docs/2007/01/11/colomb14884.htm
http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2008/04/15/colomb18551.htm

[5] http://www.cipcol.org/?p=580

[6] http://www.hrw.org/reports/2005/colombia0805/

[7] http://hrw.org/english/docs/2008/04/16/colomb18630.htm

[8] http://hrw.org/english/docs/2008/04/16/colomb18630.htm

[9] see note 8

[10] http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2008/04/16/colomb18630.htm
Also, for a great summary of the “parapolitics” scandal see: http://www.cipcol.org/?p=542

[11] The referendum results are here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/mar/17/foreignpolicy.tradeunions